Mayor Joshi’s Broken Promises to Edison Youth Under Scrutiny
Edison, NJ – May 26, 2025 – What was heralded in June 2022 by Mayor Sam Joshi as a vital $5 million investment in Edison’s youth sports, with a promised completion date of fall 2023, has become a glaring symbol of spiraling costs, protracted delays, and, critically, broken promises to the township’s youth. The new Edison Sports Recreation Center at the Jets complex, envisioned as a state-of-the-art facility for cheerleading, wrestling, football, basketball, lacrosse and other youth sports, is now not expected to be finished until 2026, marking an agonizingly three-year delay and a staggering tripling of its initial estimated cost.
This project, still very much under construction more than three years after its initial announcement, has ignited a firestorm of controversy. Multiple change orders, consistently citing “unforeseen conditions,” have systematically inflated the price tag, leaving taxpayers to foot an increasingly hefty bill while the children of Edison continue to wait. Mayor Joshi, who initially championed the project by highlighting the dire conditions cheerleaders were practicing in and promising a year-round, indoor training facility to make “Edison the epicenter for youth sports in the state,” has seen these aspirations crumble under the weight of budgetary mismanagement and delays.
The latest blow to the project’s budget arrived in February 2025 with Resolution R.061-022025, authorizing Change Order #3 with Epic Management. This single adjustment adds a substantial $557,000 to the building’s budget, pushing its total amended contract amount to an astonishing $11,628,247.45. This figure is a dramatic leap from the original $10,787,000.00 contract approved in July 2023 (R.449-072023), and comes after previous change orders had already added $284,247.45.
The financial burden doesn’t end there. An additional $398,000 was approved in July 2024 for a construction manager, and $90,280 has been allocated for turf maintenance equipment. When these supplementary expenses are combined with the $5,038,225.81 already spent on the adjacent synthetic turf fields (which themselves experienced significant cost overruns), the total investment in the “Jets building and field” complex now stands at a jaw-dropping $17,154,753.20 with more to come.
Councilman Rich Brescher, a vocal critic of the escalating expenditures, expressed his frustration in June 2024: “It’s crucial that we understand where things went wrong and how we can prevent similar issues in future projects, we owe it to the taxpayers to be transparent and accountable for every dollar spent. Now here we are once again asking the taxpayers to foot the bill for incompetence and mismanagement. How does a project that started out at $5 million get to $17.2 million with no accountability. I’d like to see how much money the vendors that have been payed on this project have donated to Mayor Joshi’s re-election campaign but he refuses to file his financial disclosures as required by law.”
A full year has passed since Councilman Brescher voiced these concerns in June of 2024, yet the very issues he highlighted—lack of accountability, ballooning costs, and a perceived lack of transparency regarding vendor contributions—remain unresolved, leaving taxpayers to continue footing the bill for a project that has far exceeded its initial scope and budget.
The recurring justification for these increases, “unforeseen conditions” such as weather and utility changes, has done little to quell public skepticism, especially given the continuous delays. While the township maintains that the changes won’t invalidate the original competitive bidding process, the sheer scale of the budget explosion and the prolonged construction timeline, now going into it’s fourth year, raise profound questions about the accuracy of initial estimates and the overall effectiveness of project oversight.
This pattern of escalating costs and protracted construction is not an isolated incident in Edison Township. The synthetic turf field project at the Jets complex also saw its final cost balloon to $5,038,225.81, a substantial increase from its original contract of $4,198,541. These parallel situations across different township projects intensify concerns about systemic issues in project management.
What was once hailed as a major boon for youth sports in Edison, intended to be a vibrant hub “making Edison the epicenter for youth sports in the state,” has instead become a symbol of budgetary excess, unfulfilled promises, and a source of deep disappointment for the young athletes and their families. As construction continues its slow, costly crawl towards a distant completion date, the Township Council faces increasing pressure to ensure fiscal responsibility and transparency. The final price tag remains shrouded in uncertainty, leaving residents to wonder how much more they will ultimately be asked to pay for a facility that has already stretched far beyond its initial vision and timeframe, and in doing so, has left the youth of Edison waiting for a promise that seems perpetually out of reach.
Mayor Joshi and Chief of Staff Bob Diehl did not respond to requests for comment regarding the ongoing cost increases and prolonged delays, leaving many to wonder who will be held accountable for the substantial financial burden and the years of anticipation that have yielded little more than a rising tab.
